| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
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When first reported here, we were informed that Obama's "Muslim Outreach Advisor" was "a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood." This updated report is more specific; Obama's former advisor was/is linked to Hamas and CAIR. "Suspicious ties force Obama adviser's resignation," from World Net Daily, August 8:
Ten days after the announcement of his appointment as the Obama campaign's coordinator for Muslim affairs, Chicago lawyer Mazen Ashabi resigned, saying he didn't want investigations into his past associations to become "distracting."Which of course is an answer in itself.Mazen Asbahi became the campaign's coordinator of outreach to Muslims on July 26, but earlier this week a report by the Internet newsletter Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report was surfaced by the Wall Street Journal that linked Asbahi to Jamal Said, a man thought by the U.S. Department of Justice to be involved in racketeering and fundraising for the Palestinian terror organization Hamas.
A pair of Detroit Free Press articles this week also revealed Asbahi spent part of the day of his appointment at a fundraiser at the home of Dr. Jukaku Tayeb, president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
CAIR has been accused in the book "Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out", published by WND books, of being a co-conspirator in funneling $12 million to Hamas, operating as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and extensive connections to terrorist organizations.
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which initiated the events leading to Asbahi's resignation, is published by a Washington think tank that tracks the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide Sunni Islam fundamentalist group based in Egypt.
The Report revealed Asbahi had briefly served in 2000 on the board of an Islamic investment fund called the Allied Assets Advisors Fund with Jamal Said, imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois. Said, in turn, was named last year by the U.S. Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in a racketeering trial surrounding alleged Hamas fundraisers, which ended in a mistrial.
According to the Wall Street Journal, after it learned of Asbahi's connection to Said, the newspaper submitted a list of questions to the Obama campaign about Asbahi's background.
Rather than answers, however, Asbahi responded with his resignation.
Referring to his time on the Allied Assets Advisors Fund board, Asbahi wrote in his resignation, "I served on that board for only a few weeks before resigning as soon as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board." The letter also said, "Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down … to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change".Well, having a presidential advisor who is directly linked to Hamas would be a "change," no?
Immediately following Asbahi's resignation, CAIR spokesmen came to his defense, calling the investigation into his past and his subsequent resignation an example of Americans' fear of Islam.Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR's Michigan chapter, told the London Guardian that links between Asbahi and terrorist groups were "baseless smears" and said, "This incident just shows how Islamophobic the political climate is right now."
Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago Council of CAIR, told the Chicago Sun-Times the Asbahi resignation demonstrates "the difficulty of charting the waters of Islamophobia in this election cycle."
Meanwhile, an Obama campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, told the Wall Street Journal the senator's campaign is in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator.
Posted by Raymond at August 9, 2008 1:01 AM
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Darn! Those inconvenient distractions again! How can we lull the najis kuffar dogs into blissful ignorance of our true intentions if they begin to suspect that our sugar-coated message of CHANGE is part of the grand jihad to subvert their miserable house at our hands and the hands of the Believers, until it collapses from within, and the Religion of Allah is made supreme over the other religions in this land?
Posted by: John C![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 9, 2008 1:27 AM
Nobamanation of Desolation '08!
Posted by: John C at August 9, 2008 1:34 AM
NOBAMANATION of DESOLATION '08!
Posted by: John C at August 9, 2008 1:38 AM
Well, with Karen Hughes funneling tax revenues to known terrorist organizations, perhaps not so much of a change after all ...
Posted by: HotSpur at August 9, 2008 1:38 AM
Maybe we could play a ‘The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game. It would be called ‘The One Degree of Mohammed’.
Posted by: pez at August 9, 2008 1:47 AM
Bacon is HARAM!
Posted by: John C at August 9, 2008 1:53 AM
We Jovians have the remedy for this Ikhwan shyster and his mates, by Jove! If they tried to peddle this poison on Jupiter, he and his kind would already be toiling away in the penal colony on Io, busy ionizing hydrosulfides or something, by Thunder!
Posted by: John C at August 9, 2008 2:04 AM
"Immediately following Asbahi's resignation, CAIR spokesmen came to his defense, calling the investigation into his past and his subsequent resignation an example of Americans' fear of Islam."
And just who and/or what causes this fear of Islam?....
...Must be violent Muslim behavior...and it is becoming more and more apparent that violent Muslim behavior is not limited to "just a few" misunderstanders or hijackers of the Islamic religion...and the violence is not minor nor insignificant..and the Islamic violence is directed to all Non Muslims where ever they are found...
...And this is way it should be..according to the Qur'an.
Posted by: exsgtbrown at August 9, 2008 4:34 AM
Jovians are a very enlightened race, if we do say so ourselves--no sentimental coddling of primitives and their murderous, barbaric superstitions, by Tonans!
Posted by: John C at August 9, 2008 4:59 AM
Since B. Hussein Obama only went to the Muslim Madrassa 4th grade he needs a little help from full fledged Muslims to get along. Rev. Wright, B. Hussein's wife, and all his other cast of terrorist and criminal aids can only do so much. B. Hussein's motto is "If it is change you want, it will be change you get. And guess what kind of change I have in store for you."
Posted by: Spot on at August 9, 2008 5:30 AM
..."the senator's campaign is in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator."
Hmm. Not *all* 'Arab Americans' are Muslims. There are plenty of Christians. Some apostates, too.
How about the candidate sits down and has a nice talk with, say, Brigitte Gabriel, Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan? I'm sure *they* could tell him who to trust - and who NOT to trust.
Here's an analogy. Let's transpose the scenario to the 1930s, or perhaps 1940. Would the government, or a political candidate, have set out to find a ''German American and Bund outreach coordinator'. Nah.
One wouldn't bother with outreach to the Bund. One would want an emphatically NON-Nazi, indeed anti-Nazi, German-American to advise one how to reliably distinguish between those Americans of German ancestry, or recently naturalised German immigrants, who were NOT Nazis or Nazi sympathisers and enablers, and those who were. And there would be no 'outreach' to the latter group at all, at all; just clear, unequivocal statements of what was, and was not, considered acceptable conduct under American law.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at August 9, 2008 6:48 AM
"a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator."
-- from the article above
One, or both? If one will do, then choose someone who may be called an "Arab-American" -- that is someone whose family, or some parts of that family, arrived from what are considered to be "Arab" countries (a little inaccurately), and who, because they or their ancestors possess both an Arab name and know or knew Arabic, fell for that major weapon of Arab supremacism -- the linguistic imperialism that attempts to convince non-Arab populations, such as the Maronites, the Copts, the Assyrians and Chaldeans -- all groups who were present in their lands, as Christians, before the Arabs arrived bearing Islam as their "gift," and who may be understood as the hold-outs, the ones who did not succumb and convert (how many of the "Muslim Arabs" in Egypt are in fact the descendent of Copts, in the way that the entire Muslim population of Pakistan is descended from Hindus and Jains and Buddhists? How many of the "Muslims" in Lebanon have Christian ancestors who, not being able to withstand Muslim pressures in this or that area outside the Christian heartland, succumbed to Islam?).
The number of Muslim-Americans in this country, aside from the Black Muslims whom Arab Muslims distinctly try to avoid (though also, at times, to exploit), and do not regard as real Muslims, is far less than 1% of the population. Why feel the need to find a "Muslim American" outreach coordinator? And what would such a person co-ordinate about? How to avoid having non-Muslims in America read the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira, with understanding? How to make sure that the more than one hundred Jihad verses -- start with 9.5 and 9.29 -- never are really brought to anyone's attention? ]
What would such a "Muslim-American coordinator" do? Raise money from Muslim-Americans who would want to make sure that their preferred candidate did nothing except continue the idiotic Bush-Rice-Hughes policy of continuing to believe, or to deceive by pretending to believe, that there is nothing wrong with the texts, the tenets, the atittudes of Islam?
What would that coordinator be doing, as he fund-raised, and what would those "Muslim Americans"(and how does that adjective jostle that noun, because, after all, the principles of Islam as embodied in the Shari'a flatly contradict the letter and spirit of the Constitution?) expect -- and still worse -- possibly get, for their money?
Posted by: Hugh at August 9, 2008 8:41 AM
"...the senator's campaign is in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator."
I recommend Tony Shaloub. I don't know if he's a Muslim, but he is an Arab American, and he seems to have a sense of humor.
Posted by: Abscedere at August 9, 2008 9:43 AM
you can't trust any muslim...(unfortunately)
Posted by: theygottago at August 9, 2008 10:03 AM
Obama failed an important test with this appointment.
For those of us who feel he is too sympathetic (or "sentimental," as Hugh puts it) toward Islam, too uniformed, naive or politically correct regarding the threat to Infidels from jihad, Obama had a chance to show us, with the selection of a Muslim liaison, that he would properly vet this Muslim member of his campaign, taking every care to ensure he had no ties to jihad-supporting Muslim organizations.
Perhaps it isn't possible to find a prominent Muslim supporter of Obama with appeal and credibility in the Muslim community who hasn't shown some sympathy with the Jihadists. If so, Obama should have avoided appointing anyone to this position.
It doesn't bode well for his administration, or the US when he engages in dialogue with foreign leaders, that Obama failed this test.
But then again, could we expect more from someone who--by some strange coincidence--included in his campaign an entire teams of foreign policy advisors that are hostile to Israel. And almost all of those "experts" have a conspiratorial view of the American Jewish community, believing that American support for Israel isn't based on shared values, military cooperation or moral considerations, but solely due to the desire for American politicians to raise money and win support from "voters in New York and Miami.?
at August 9, 2008 10:29 AM
correction: "too uniformed" should be: too uninformed.
Posted by: 4infidels at August 9, 2008 10:30 AM
I missed it, but can someone tell me who Obama appointed to be his Christian outreach director? And his Hindu outreach director?
Being a man for all people, I'm sure he would reach out to all groups equally right? Right?
sigh!
at August 9, 2008 3:47 PM
Why hasn't the media reported on "Al-taqiyya"...a practice of Muslims blatantly lying to non-Muslims.
Posted by: toni08 at August 9, 2008 11:44 PM
Muslims form less than 1 % of the US population.
Now: it would be much more interesting and relevant for candidates to have a 'First Nations' Outreach Adviser', since the original Americans, the people who were in the land for something like ten thousand years before the Europeans ever arrived, have a far greater claim to be heard and taken into account within the American polity (think of all those treaties! think of the Navajo Codetalkers in WWII and their lesser-known predecessors in WWI, and the long and honorable service of many First Nations men -and women - in the American army ) than have the Muslims whose aggressive supremacist creed intends cultural and spiritual annihilation and slavery for Red Man, Black Man, Yellow Man and White Man all alike (and whose limited and reluctant participation in the American army has been characterised by some spectacular examples of subversion, treachery and betrayal).
Native Americans were about on a par with our own pagan Irish or pagan Scandinavian and Germanic ancestors, who despite many admirable qualities were, nevertheless - prior to the coming of people like St Patrick - slavetakers, concubine keepers, brawlers, raiders, rapers, and - quite frequently - human sacrificers. And like our own pre-christian ancestors - and unlike the Muslims - First Nations let their women walk uncovered in the sunlight, with hair flowing free; and they sang, and danced, and created sculptures and paintings of living beings. *That* puts them well ahead of Muslims, in my book.
So: Obama, if you REALLY want to make a statement, fuggedabout da Muslims altogether. They don't deserve special consideration at all, at all, at all. Appoint a 'First Nations Adviser' instead.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at August 10, 2008 3:12 AM
Americans are sick and tired of hearing about Barak Hussein Osama. Thos who are in bed with him will continue to love him no matter what and those who know that is could be dirty are grossed out at the sight of his name or picture and ready to vomit.
Posted by: American at August 11, 2008 9:56 AM
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